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U.S. experts analyzing black boxes from China Eastern Boeing 737 that nose-dived into mountainside killing 132

No survivors found in China plane crash
No signs of survivors in China Eastern plane crash 02:04

Beijing — Both black boxes from a passenger plane crash in southern China last month that killed 132 people are being analyzed by U.S. experts at a government lab in Washington, D.C. The National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday it is helping its Chinese counterparts download information from the flight data recorder. The American agency said last week it was doing the same for the cockpit voice recorder.
 
Both may have been damaged by the impact of the crash. If the information on them can be recovered, it could shed light on why the China Eastern Boeing 737-800 went into a sudden nosedive and slammed into the ground in a mountainous area on March 21.

Rescue Underway After Plane Carrying 132 Crashes In South China
Rescuers find a black box, which was preliminarily identified as the cockpit voice recorder from the crashed China Eastern Airlines Flight MU5735, at the site of a plane crash on March 23, 2022 in Tengxian County, Wuzhou City, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region of China. VCG/Getty

The crash left a 65-foot-deep crater in a mountainside, shattered the plane and set off a fire in the surrounding forest. More than 49,000 pieces of plane debris were found. It took two days to find the cockpit voice recorder and six days for the flight data recorder, which was buried 5 feet underground.

U.S. accident investigators arrived in China last weekend to assist the investigation by the Civil Aviation Administration of China. The NTSB team is taking part because the plane was manufactured in the United States.
 
Chinese officials have said a preliminary investigation report would be completed within 30 days of the crash.

CORRECTION China Plane Crash
In this photo released by Xinhua News Agency, search and rescuer workers conduct search operations at the China Eastern flight crash site in Tengxian County on Saturday, March 26, 2022, in southern China. Lu Boan / AP

Flight MU5735 with 123 passengers and nine crew members was headed from the city of Kunming in southwestern China to Guangzhou, a provincial capital and export manufacturing hub near Hong Kong in the southeast.

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